Naruto: Beyond The Cage

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Chapter 2 – The Name of a Dead Man

The world was still small to me. My fragile body limited my movements, but my mind had no such constraints. I observed everything: the silent corridors, the way the servants treated me with cautious delicacy, the strange looks of the elders when they passed by me.

But, above all, I observed my parents.

My mother was kind, attentive, always holding me with a caress that seemed to want to protect me from something invisible. My father was firm and disciplined, but not cold. However, there was always something in their eyes… something that I did not fully understand.

One day, I finally found out.

The Name That Was Not Mine

The visitor was an older woman, with impeccable posture and a controlled voice. She observed me for a while, evaluating me as if searching for something.

"He is growing up well," she said. "He almost reminds me of…"

The silence that followed was heavy.

My mother lowered her eyes. My father clenched his hands into fists.

"The past should stay in the past," he said, firmly closing the subject.

But the woman hesitated before leaving. And then, without realizing it, she murmured,

"Little Seiji would have liked to meet you."

Seiji.

The name did something strange inside me.

That's my name. But… it belonged to someone else before me.

Suddenly, everything made sense.

The looks. The silence. The hesitation my parents gave me whenever they called my name.

I wasn't the first.

I was given the name of a dead man.

A Bitter Truth

For the next few days, my mind worked nonstop. Who was Seiji before me? What happened to him? How could someone so young be gone already?

The answer came in time. A snippet of conversation between the servants. A vague comment from an elder. Small fragments that formed a bitter truth.

My brother died on a mission.

I shouldn't care. I shouldn't feel anything but curiosity. But for the first time since I came to this world, I felt something different. Something heavy.

I felt Anger.

My name.

It wasn't mine.

It belonged to someone else before me. A ghost, a dead person I never even had the chance to meet.

Seiji.

The name my mother whispered with sadness. The name that made my father look away. The name that, in that visitor's mouth, wasn't said as something alive, but as a reminder of a mistake, of a failure, of something that should never have happened.

I wasn't a loved child. I was a second attempt.

A substitute.

That was unacceptable.

After that day, I started paying attention to details that I had previously ignored.

The looks the elders gave me when they saw me. The conversations that ended abruptly when I was around. My own father hesitating before calling me by my name, as if he wasn't used to saying that sound again.

I was the shadow of a dead man.

But if I'm going to replace someone, then let it be completely.

Seiji, the first, was a failure.

Seiji, the second, will be remembered as something greater.

I didn't know how my brother died. I didn't know if he was strong, weak, brilliant, or mediocre. But I knew one thing: in the end, he was forgotten.

No matter how much my parents loved him, he was gone. And little by little, the world would move on without him.

If I was brought into this world to take someone else's place... then so be it.

If they want me to replace Seiji, then I'll be so good that no one will remember that there was anyone before me.

If they want me to be a replacement, then I'll be so exceptional that no one will remember the first. My name will not be a tribute to a dead man. It will be something that will mark the history of the Hyuuga Clan

Seiji Hyuuga will be remembered as a great name.

But not for the first.

For the second.